Cut the pay of senior teachers and heads

Published: 16 June, 2011

• I HAVE several teacher friends and they work extremely hard as, I also understand, do their teaching assistants for the education of our young people.

I realise that there is something very wrong happening in schools and they are quite perturbed about it,while obviously not wishing to cause themselves problems. 

Something must be addressed.

There are 12 staff being made redundant at Parliament Hill School for example. 

This means people are possibly able to apply for lower grade jobs or new jobs which have fewer hours – effectively the same thing. 

Some will be losing jobs completely. This is happening because schools are in financial crisis.

But a headteacher earns £100k. A deputy head up to £80k. 

There are four of these in a large school. A head of department up to £60k or even £70k... 

These people can afford to pay their mortgages very easily where lower paid staff struggle. 

Now, these days, a headteacher is not to be seen in a classroom.

Even deputy heads teach only a few lessons per week. For the rest of the time they are in their offices “running the school”.

They decide to cause upset and misery to lower paid staff who spend seven hours in the classroom “at the chalk-face” doing sterling work educating our children 

Teaching assistants earn well below average salary – something like £15k with all the term-time reductions, and yet face cuts and redundancies, though they work extremely hard to help our young people.

My question is: why are schools not considering pay cuts for the higher paid staff?  

Obviously because these higher paid staff do not decide to reduce their own pay, even though they could pay their bills much more easily, they obviously choose to stress the lower paid workers and cause upset to families of hard working dedicated professionals. 

I call upon a higher authority to take this situation in hand and make some sensible decisions on the matter... I call upon the media to discuss this and at least make an investigation into whether schools’ money, our money, is being effectively spent.

CHRISTIAN BISHOP
Lady Margaret’s Road, NW5